There hasn’t been any rain
since I arrived. The lawns
are bleached and tonight goldenrod
and burnt grass reflect
across my walls like ponds.
After all these days
the textures and scents of my room
are still strange and comforting.
The pines outside, immobile
as chessmen, fume turps
that blend with the soap taste
of the sheets and with the rot
of camphor and old newspapers
in the bare bureau drawers.
Jarred by a headlight’s glare
from the county road, the crumbling
plaster swarms with shadows.
The bulb in the barn, dull
and eternal, sways and flickers
as though its long drool
of cobwebs had been touched,
and the house loosens, unmoors,
and, distending and shuddering, rocks
me until I fall asleep.
Last December the mare
I learned to ride on died.
On the frozen paddock hill,
down, she moaned all night
before the mink farmers
came in their pick-up
truck, sat on her dark
head and cut her throat.
I dream winter. Shutters
slamming apart. Bags
crammed with beer bottles
tipping against clapboard
walls. Owls in chimneys.
Drafts; thieves; snow.
Over the crusty fields
scraps of blue loveletters
mill wildly like children,
and a fat woman, her rough
stockings tattered away
at a knee, sprints in high,
lumbering bounds among
the skating papers. Out
to the road-red hydrant,
bus bench, asphalt—
a wasp twirling at her feet,
she is running back.
My first kiss was here.
I can remember the spot—
next to a path, next
to a cabin, to a garden patch—
but not how it happened
or what I felt, except
amazement that a kiss
could be soundless. Now,
propped up on an elbow,
I smoke through the dawn, smudging
the gritty sheets with ashes,
wondering what if that night
someone nearby had snorted
aloud, had groaned or even
had only rustled a branch.
Maybe someone did.
Day finally. The trees
and fences clarify, unsnarl.
Flagstones, coins, splash
across the driveway crowns
and the stark underbrush
animals go away.
A rickety screendoor bangs,
slaps its own echo
twice. There were no footsteps
but someone is out sifting
ashes in the garbage pit.
Suddenly dishes jangle
the bright middle distances
and the heat begins again:
by now the ground must be
hard and untillable as ice.
Far off from the house,
the lake, jellied with umbre
weed scum, tilts toward
the light like a tin tray.
Dead rowboats clog
the parched timber dam
and along the low banks
the mounds of water rubble
I gathered yesterday
have dried and shrunk down
to a weak path wobbling
back and forth from the edge.